Brian Goes Back to College
Template:Infobox Family Guy Season 4b
Brian Goes Back To College (and Stewie Goes With Him For Obvious Comedy Reasons) is an episode from season 4b of FOX animated television series Family Guy. First aired November 13, 2005. Production code 4ACX18.
Plot summary
Template:Spoiler Peter, Cleveland, Joe and Quagmire get dressed up as the protagonists from The A-Team to go to an 80's TV shows convention. The event is covered by Brian for a local newspaper. The editor of The New Yorker happens to read the paper and is impressed by Brian's writing, and offers him a job. But when Brian admits he did not finish college, he is immediately fired.
Brian resolves to take the one class he needs to get his college degree. Stewie tags along with Brian, leaving Gary Coleman as his replacement at home. Brian stresses about his class while Stewie parties.
Meanwhile, spurred by winning the costume contest, Peter and friends decide to become a real A-Team and solve problems around town.
Notes
- Stewie begins to bug Brian about his novel in the same way he did (with the high pitched voice) in the episode "Brian the Bachelor," but Brian slaps him before he goes on for too long.
- Continuing a normal tradition of Meg bashing, after Stewie stops filming Brian because he didn't cry after getting fired, he goes to see what Meg is doing, sees her in her underwear, and starts to choke from the scene.
- The Stephen Hawking functionary who had been a fellow contestant in "Brian the Bachelor" has since married a fellow quadriplegic who also speaks with an electronic keyboard.
- Immediately following the A-Team intro parody, Peter clutches his leg and exhales exactly as he did in "Wasted Talent". Although he only makes that noise once instead of continuing.
- Looking at the scoreboard when Brian and Stewie are at the Brown football game, you can see the opposing team to be "Board of Education" a reference to the famous court case Brown vs Board of Education which outlawed the segregation of public schools.
Cultural references
80s television references
- Peter and his friends impersonate the A-Team with Peter as "Hannibal" Smith, Quagmire as "Faceman" Peck, Joe as "Howling Mad" Murdock and Cleveland as B.A. Baracus. Cleveland says, “I pity the fool,” a catch phrase associated with Mr. T, the actor who played B.A. on the show, although he is better known for using the line in the film Rocky III, not The A-Team, where he mostly restricted himself to calling people "fools."
- The original A-Team opening went as follows:
- "In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... THE A-TEAM".
- For this episode, it was changed to:
- "In 2005, a group of local misfits won a costume contest at an 80s TV convention. These men promptly returned home and drank some beer. Today they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you find them, maybe you can hire... THE A-TEAM".
- Peter mistakes Brian for Alf, the snouted, furry extraterrestrial of the sitcom of the same name. With this black tie, Brian says that he is actually impersonating Douglas Brackman from the drama L.A. Law.
- Bill Cosby is seen leading a group of similarly dressed men in aerobics that imitate Cosby’s mannerisms.
- The MC of the convention says that Alan Thicke, star of Growing Pains "will be up in a minute to answer your hate mail."
- Brian watches an episode of the sitcom The Facts of Life in which a masculine Jo asks mentor Mrs. Garrett if it's okay that her penis touched her vagina.
Other cultural references
- In a flashback, Peter tries "TAG Body Spray for sick cats." This parodies commerials for TAG, in which men simply spray TAG on themselves, and women flock to them.
- A flashback shows Stewie performing at the 1969 Woodstock musical festival where he tells the Hippies not to smoke weed, and then begins to sing a song praising "Establishment."
- After he is fired from his job at The New Yorker, Brian encounters a "No Dogs Allowed" sign, hears a booming voice enforcing the rule and then lays on top of a doghouse. This parodies Snoopy in the 1972 Peanuts film Snoopy, Come Home.
- Chris says he saw an after school special about dropping out of college and that "it didn’t work-out for Kristy McNichol, but then again nothing did." McNichol, star of the 1970s drama Family, has been out of the spotlight. Family Guy made another joke about McNichol is the episode "Holy Crap."
- A cutaway parodies the execution of King Louis XVI of France as a simple job firing.
- Brian's potential roommate wears a t-shirt of the punk band The Misfits.
- Gary Coleman takes Stewie's place while he’s at Brown. Coleman combines his catch phrase with one of Stewie’s to form "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, vile woman?, because he owed Stewie one."
- Actress Kelly McGillis hosts an educational video on college dating.
- Stewie buys a poster of a work by Dutch artist M.C. Escher. He mistakenly calls it "Crazy Stairs." Its actual title is Relativity.
- When Stewie points out to Brian that "lots of people cheat", the scene cuts to Ashlee Simpson's infamous performance on the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jude Law where she gets caught lip-synching and dances awkwardly before leaving the stage. The background music, however, is a baritone male singer performing "Ol' Man River" from the musical Show Boat.
- Roger Williams Park is an actual park in Providence, Rhode Island, named after Rhode Island founder Roger Williams
- Lois scares Brian with a Hoover vacuum cleaner.
- The scene in which Brian and Stewie work out in preparation for Brian's final exam is a parody of Rocky Balboa's training session for his fight with Ivan Drago in the movie Rocky IV. Brian goes as far as to yell "DRAGO" at the peak of the mountain, as Rocky did in the movie. This is the second Rocky reference in this episode. As in the film, the song in the background is "Heart's On Fire" by John Cafferty.
- Peter complains that the recent Playboy pictorial of 1980s pop star Debbie Gibson came too late.
- Stewie plays Ultimate at Brown - Brown was the 2005 National Championship Team in Ultimate.
